Children are a Blessing
by Zeionia aka Disturbed
Summary: Night Furies are the unholy children of lightning and Death. So how exactly do they come to be? The village of Berk is about to get a surprising crash course.


Disclaimer: I do not own _How to Train Your Dragon_ nor do I make any profit from this work.

Summary: Night Furies are the unholy children of lightning and Death. So how exactly do they come to be? The village of Berk is about to get a crash course.

Children are a Blessing

By Zeionia a.k.a. Disturbed

The familiar screech of dragon echoed over the Viking town of Berk. A loud cacophony of shouts and warnings to "duck and cover!" followed almost immediately. Astrid, wife of Hiccup, let loose a nostalgic sigh and walked to the door. Landings never quite seemed to work out for Toothless and Hiccup despite the years they had been flying together. It was one last holdover from the accident-prone teenager she fondly remembered. Of course, Hiccup was still clumsy but most of his accidents now-a-days were limited to blowing up his shop rather than the entire village and only happened once a month.

"Daddy's back!" shrieked one small voice.

"Daddy!" echoed a second.

Two small children launched themselves down the stairs. Freya slammed into a bale of hay, placed there for that very reason by Hiccup, and made a sharp turn to shoot out the door. Half a beat behind was Stoick the Younger. Not quite as fast as his older sister, he still made a determined effort to hit the cushioning bale before hurrying after her. Astrid shook her head. She—and most of the village—was afraid that Stoick the Younger would take after his father more than his grandfather.

Astrid reached the door just in time to see Hiccup carrying something heavy in his arms before child number one knock into him followed promptly by child number two. Hiccup, who had balance problems enough with only one real leg, couldn't use his arms to straighten himself and started to tip backwards.

"Uh-oh."

Astrid lunged and grabbed his arms, still tightly wrapped around what appeared to be a rock, just as Toothless surged up from behind to steady him. With an exasperated sigh, she pulled him back onto the porch. The children cheered at this momentous rescue and proceed down the front steps to climb all over their hero, Toothless.

"Thanks," said Hiccup kissing her lightly on cheek. "That could have been bad."

"You're welcome, dear," said Astrid. She glanced down pointedly. "What is that?"

Hiccup looked at his burden. "At this point, I believe it s a large rock, possibly a small boulder. I'm not certain."

Astrid tried so very hard not to roll her eyes. "You took off for a week and half and all you brought back was a rock?"

"Yes? I blame the lug," said Hiccup glaring fondly at his dragon-companion.

Astrid smiled. Hiccup and Toothless interacted on a deeper level than the rest of the Vikings. She knew most of their friends saw their dragons as pets, but she knew that Hiccup thought of Toothless as more of a friend. It helped that Toothless was a bit smarter than the rest of the dragons and that they had spent so much time working through their injuries together. She tried to recreate their friendship with her own Deadly Nadder, Mab, and had produced a meaningful relationship. Still, Astrid doubted that she would be terribly happy about questing for a rock.

"Well, inside then. You can tell us all about it over dinner. It's a good thing you came home when you did, the winter storms are going to start soon."

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Three days later, Astrid was proven right. But it was not heavy thunder that woke Hiccup from a sound sleep. A certain dragon was the culprit. His preferred method of roaring Hiccup awake was forbidden when either the children or Astrid was asleep, so Toothless settled for poking his rider incessantly. After a good minute of steady prodding, Hiccup rose into consciousness and sat up.

"What, what is it? Stop poking me. I'm awake."

Toothless licked him for good measure then let out a quiet, keening whine. Hiccup paused mid face-wipe, he really hated getting licked awake, and stared at his dragon.

"Is something wrong?" he asked more insistently this time.

Toothless whined again and climbed over to the door. Hiccup pulled on his boots and got out of bed. Astrid grumbled but stayed asleep. He grabbed his winter coat and started outside but stopped when Toothless blocked his path and stared, quite pointedly, at the rock. Hiccup sighed but got the message and picked up the rock before starting again. This time Toothless let him go quite happily.

The dragon led his rider to a cliff near but not right next to the village. Hiccup's chest was heaving with effort by the time they arrived, but he still had the breath to whistle at the truly massive pile of wood Toothless had managed to gather. He set down the rock, possibly a small boulder, where Toothless pointed and stood back to catch his breath. While he was resting, Toothless start transferring wood from the pile into a more orderly setting around the rock.

"Making a bonfire, huh?" asked Hiccup. "Want some help?"

Toothless snorted and shook his entire body, indicating the negative. Hiccup shrugged and sat down to watch. In half an hour, the pile of wood had become a fairly neat—for a dragon—bonfire on top the rock. Toothless eyed the stack carefully and seemingly satisfied settled down so that Hiccup could climb on his back.

Hiccup stood slowly, the cold made his leg ache, but dutifully climbed onto his dragon. He had a fairly good idea of what was about to happen. He was a fairly imaginative sort and so was not surprised when they circled the village once for altitude before Toothless promptly set the stack ablaze. Mostly what Hiccup wanted to know was why. But he decided he would find out soon enough. Task accomplished, Toothless landed next to his fire and sat down to wait.

At that point Hiccup's work was done. He could have gone home and slid into bed next to his wonderful loving and tough-as-nails wife. But then he had also spent more than a week past Helheim's Gate helping Toothless find the perfect rock. In the end, curiosity won out. With the fire lit, it was warm enough so that Hiccup's leg did not bother him too much anyway.

The two sat there for hours watching as the bonfire slowly burned itself out. A few curious Vikings wandered over to see what was happening, but for the most part the cold and long walk kept everyone away.

The fire was almost completely gone when Astrid arrived. She was wearing her thick winter coat, the one he had bought her two winter ago that was lined with white fox fur. She was beautiful to his eyes and Hiccup's heart pounded just looking at her. He had never been so lucky in his life as the day she agreed to marry him.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I have an idea," he admitted. "But I'm not positive."

"It's about to rain," said Astrid pointing skyward.

Hiccup looked up and received a fat raindrop to his nose for his trouble. He snorted and blinked and ignored the soft giggles/snuffles of laughter coming from his wife and dragon.

"Don't you think you should come in?" she asked.

Hiccup looked at Toothless, who cocked his head and held up a wing. He grinned and held out a hand to Astrid, who rolled her eyes but grabbed it anyway. Pressed against the dragon's side and shielded from the rain, the two them were very warm. They shuffled around a bit, until Toothless knocked them with his wing, but Astrid ended up sitting in Hiccup's lap and peered over her shoulder, both of them intent on the fading bonfire.

It was dying even faster now that the rain had started. What few lumps of wood that remained were being pushed aside. A very familiar lump glowed dully in the light from the last few embers.

"Is that that rock?" demanded Astrid.

"I think—

CRASH! Lightning struck the outcropping making all three of them flinch. Another strike followed and another, as if all the lightning from the storm had come to bear in this very spot. Strike after strike they waited, the three of them, man, woman, and dragon. One final blast touched down, longer and louder than any lightning strike they had ever heard, and then it was over. The entire storm finished. Dawn's rosy glow peeked over the horizon.

Toothless flipped back his wings and stomped over to the center of the bonfire. Astrid helped Hiccup to his feet. They heard Toothless give a soft purr and froze when a higher, younger cry answered it.

Hiccup recovered first, but Astrid lacked his limp. So they rounded Toothless' bulk together and drew up short at the same time as they caught their first sight of a baby Night Fury squealing with delight at being licked clean by Toothless. Astrid, being the feminine creature that she was, could not resist cooing.

"Astrid, after being gone for a week and a half, I believe Toothless and I brought back an egg cleverly disguised as a large rock or small boulder. We can call him Níðhöggr or maybe Toothless Junior, T.J. for short. How does that sound?"

Astrid retained her darling expression for a minute longer before promptly punching her rambling husband in the shoulder. Some things never changed.

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End.

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I hope you enjoyed it. There aren't any other Night Furies shown in the movie, but Toothless can't be the only one. So a unique birth for a unique dragon.

In Norse mythology Níðhöggr is the dragon that gnaws on the roots of Yggdrasill, the World Tree. Gnawing is sort of like teething, right?


End file.
